


Fire Lily

by TheZpart



Series: Touché-Verse and Associated Prompts [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Barry dies a bunch but it's the Stolen Century so it's chill, Blood, Chronic Illness, Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, F/M, Hanahaki Disease, Mutual Pining, canon typical language, hanahaki as a chronic illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:21:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23059921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheZpart/pseuds/TheZpart
Summary: The Hanahaki disease ran in his family. It was one of those nasty, rare-but-dominant genetic illnesses, the kind where, if someone in your family has it, you almost certainly do, too. Barry had watched his cousin die from it when he was just a kid, after a miserable eight-month period of coughing up blood and tiny blue petals. He’d stood beside the coffin of the girl who has been his babysitter, his confidant, his co-exile at the kid’s table, and he made a decision: he would never fall in love.He was eleven years old.
Relationships: Barry Bluejeans/Lup
Series: Touché-Verse and Associated Prompts [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1657273
Comments: 10
Kudos: 82





	Fire Lily

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heyitssnek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyitssnek/gifts).



> This was written based on a prompt by AO3 user sneks_stories_2. I had never heard of this trope before you suggested it! I hope it fulfills your expectations.

The Hanahaki disease ran in his family. It was one of those nasty, rare-but-dominant genetic illnesses, the kind where, if someone in your family has it, you almost certainly do, too. Barry had watched his cousin die from it when he was just a kid, after a miserable eight-month period of coughing up blood and tiny blue petals. He’d stood beside the coffin of the girl who has been his babysitter, his confidant, his co-exile at the kid’s table, and he made a decision: he would never fall in love.

He was eleven years old.

——-

Dr. Barry Bluejeans, PhD. PhD, was one of the most accomplished arcanists in the world. As a teenager, he’d been naturally pretty smart, but hardly the smartest in his class. The difference was, he refused to make friends, join any clubs, play any sports. He studied, and he did pretty much nothing else. He kept that up through university and two different graduate school programs. He knew more about about planar dynamics and arcane interactions than any other human on the planet (there were a few elves who had centuries of study on him). He was a professor now, but the kind who didn’t actually teach, the kind who worked alone in a lab and occasionally gave a guest lecture or two. He didn’t talk to the other faculty, didn’t mentor students. He’d made it to forty-eight years old without falling in love.

But that makes it sound like Barry was living a miserable existence, which isn’t quite true. He really, genuinely loved his work, loved the recognition that came with being the best at it. In the last months, he’d been one of the arcanists selected to work with the mysterious Light of Creation, an honor granted to only a very few people. He had a little one-bedroom house, with an overstuffed couch, a working fireplace, and thousands and thousands of books. He had two cats and got breakfast with his mom every Sunday and overall felt pretty content. He isolated himself as a precaution, but he didn’t think he needed to anymore. Surely, if he were going to fall in love, it would have happened already.

When the opening on the Starblaster opened up, taking it felt like a reasonable risk. It would be more interpersonal interaction than he’d had in years, but think of what he’d learn!

And besides, it was only a month-long voyage. You can’t fall in love in a month.

——-

They weren’t going to get the light.

They’d tried so hard, forged alliances with the locals that had become friendships, searched every inch of the northern continent. But the Hunger was coming in a week, and the Light was nowhere to be found.

It wasn’t the first time they’d failed to find it, obviously, but it was the first time they knew what that meant. Everyone on this entire plane was going to be subsumed by the Hunger, and they couldn’t stop it.

It was too much. They were meeting with the local governing body to organize one last-ditch search, and it was too much. Barry muttered an “excuse me” in Davenport’s general direction, and ducked out of the room. He managed to get to an empty conference room before breaking down in tears. Everyone on this planet. Everyone on the animal planet. Everyone on his home—everyone he’d _ever known_. It was too much to contemplate.

There was a knock at the door. Barry didn’t look up. He couldn’t.

“You okay, man?” It was Lup’s voice.

“Not really,” Barry said into his hands.

“Course you’re not. Stupid question.” Lup sat down beside him, tucking her arm around his. Four years in, everyone’s barriers about touching had come down, so this kind of contact was ordinary, but it didn’t feel ordinary, somehow. She leaned against him, not trying to comfort him, just being there.

When Barry finally stopped shaking, he said, “Thank you.”

“Of course.” She squeezed his hand. “Do you want to go join the others, or do you need to sit out a while longer?”

“I’ll go back. Just, give me a minute to wash my face.”

“Sure thing. I’ll meet you in there.”

Barry watched her walk away, his arm still feeling her warmth.

That night, he woke up coughing. Something was scratching at his throat—something was _in his throat_. He scrambled out of his room and to the shared bathroom, crashing on the floor next to the toilet. He heaved and hacked until the thing in his throat finally came up, and he spat it into the toilet bowl, along with a worrying amount of blood.

It was a fire lily petal, brilliant orange and speckled with yellow and brown. It was as long as his tongue, and when he picked it up, he found it stiff and inflexible. He knew what it meant. His cousin had choked to death on tiny petals the size of his fingernail—he would not survive much of this.

——

It took him six months to die that first year. He hadn’t told anyone what was happening to him, and in those last few days everyone had been too panicked to notice, but once they reached the next cycle, there was no hiding it.

Merle knew about the disease, of course—between his medical knowledge and his botanical knowledge, how could he not? He made a concoction for Barry to drink that tasted awful but coated his throat in a waxy substance, so when the petals came up, they didn’t cut him. It meant he got about five months of being a functioning crew member, searching for the Light and studying the Hunger and stabbing the weird crab monsters that seemed _very_ interested in the Starblaster.

The others were cool about it. They didn’t ask him who it was. He overheard Magnus and Lucretia talking about it one day—they assumed he’d fallen for someone from that fourth cycle who was now dead and therefore unable to reciprocate. Magnus and Taako had both carried on flirtations with locals that year, and Barry had worked closely with some of the arcanists there, so it wasn’t that wild an assumption to make. Barry decided not to correct them.

Everyone did their best to make him feel better. Taako created a variety of dairy-free ice creams for him, and Lucretia would sit on the other side of the bathroom door from him and read aloud, to distract him from his coughing. Magnus thumped him on his back and made jokes about the situation to make it seem trivial. Davenport made sure he didn’t work too much, but also treated him like he was just as competent as he’d always been. And Lup—

Well.

Lup would sit with him, hand on his back, when he couldn’t breathe. She brought him water, and let him lean on her when he felt too weak to stand. He couldn’t explain to her why this was counterproductive, killing him faster. Also, he liked having her there. So he let her take care of him, as much as anyone could.

For those months, before it got really bad, the disease was mostly just embarrassing. He was a grown-ass man, pining himself to death over a woman who was too old for him—or too young for him? It was hard to tell with elves. Wrong for him, regardless, not interested in him. And she never would be. If he could just get over her—but that seemed unlikely. How could anyone just _get over_ Lup?

She was with him when he died. He hadn’t been able to leave the ship for nearly a month, had been trapped between the bathroom and his bed for the better part of a week. He had progressed from coughing up petals to full flowers, and now he felt the sharp edges of what could only be leaves tickling his throat. Everyone else was gone. They’d located the light, and were going to fight their way to it. Lup had offered to stay behind and keep an eye on him. Barry hadn’t wanted her to—they needed her firepower—but he felt too shitty to argue.

It was not a good death. She’d stepped out to grab some water, and when she came back, she found him crumpled on the floor, two huge lilies, complete with stalks and leaves, emerging from his open mouth. Blood trickled from his lips, dotting the carpet. His eyes were open, conscious, terrified.She dropped the water, falling to her knees beside him. She took his hand. “Hey,” she whispered. “Hey. You’re okay.”

He couldn’t talk, but he raised an eyebrow at her, as if to say, I am obviously not okay.

She let out a watery laugh. “Yeah, okay, you’re right. But listen, it’ll be over soon. And then I’ll see you in a few months. You haven’t died yet, have you?”

He shook his head.

“It’s the easiest thing in the world. You just close your eyes, and then bam, you’re back on the deck, healthy as anything.”

Barry nodded. The stalk inched out of him, and he convulsed. His hand tightened around Lup’s. He hoped he wasn’t hurting her, but it was involuntary. He couldn’t breathe. He was drowning here in the hallway.

Lup leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “See you soon, babe.”

And then he was gone.

——

The mission priority stayed the same: find the Light, fight the Hunger, get out at the end of the year. But now the crew of the Starblaster had a secondary mission. They were going to save Barry.

Merle and Lup scoured the medical libraries of every world they visited, interviewed botanists and doctors and wizards alike. They cultivated medicinal plants on the deck and charmed amulets in Lup’s lab. Everyone else listened for rumors of cures or treatments, helped water the plants, sourced ingredients for spells.

And bit by bit, things did improve for Barry. Nobody was able to find a cure—on every plane that had the disease, the only options were requited love or death—but the treatments added up. A spell to make the plant grow slower here, a drug to open his airways there. Barry started living for eight months at a time, and then ten. He started to die in battle, or by accidentally blowing up his lab by prodding at the light.

When he survived an entire year, nearly a decade after he’d first contracted the disease, the crew threw him a party. Magnus raised him on his shoulders, and everyone toasted him. Barry couldn’t stop smiling. He loved them all so much, and they loved him. Maybe Lup didn’t love him the way he’d like her to, but that hardly mattered in the face of this family he’d found for himself.

——

Cycle seventeen. The robots here had people inside them, and that was the coolest shit Barry had ever seen. He was fascinated by them. He worked with them as much as he could, figuring out how they worked. To keep your soul _outside_ of your body, so that if something happened to you, you’d just keep on going—he was obsessed by the idea.

There seemed like there should be a way to do it without committing to being a robot. Barry had a few necromantic reference books in his lab. Maybe there was something in there that could help. Imagine if he could die and still help his friends! His body had always seemed separate from him, anyway, not truly who he was, and now that it had betrayed him so thoroughly, the idea of abandoning it completely appealed to him.

Beyond that burst of inspiration, though, the year was pretty unremarkable for Barry. He stayed on the ship for the big confrontation, since he couldn’t swim. When Lup came back all fired up, making them promise not to destroy any worlds, he was shocked. They hadn’t tried to do that, had they? That didn’t sound like his friends—though their situation was desperate.

———

It wasn’t until later that he noticed his coughing had gone away. He was on so much medication at that point that he had just figured it was working, but then he forgot to take his amulet with him one morning. When he realized, he braced himself for the pain that was surely coming, but instead he felt—fine. He felt fine.

The next day, he didn’t take any of his medicines, didn’t renew any of his charms. He kept this a secret—the others would think he was being irresponsible, and maybe they were right, but he had to know. He felt totally normal. He stayed off his meds for a week, and still, his breathing was fine.

It was weird. He didn’t think he was over Lup. She was still the coolest person he’d ever met. His heart still raced whenever she touched him or laughed at one of his jokes. But that must be the case—what else could explain it?

————

Two more cycles passed. More pain and fear, more studying and fleeing, but Barry’s lungs stayed gorgeously, mercifully clear. Merle caught on that Barry was cured, but didn’t make a big deal about it. He understood—the seven of them had so little privacy. Barry should be able to break the news himself.

Lup, though, was still looking for a cure. She found a root that was supposed to suppress coughing, no matter the cause, and brought it to Barry.

He was surprised. He thought she’d forgotten, now that he wasn’t dying all the time. “Thank you,” he said, “but um, actually, I don’t need it.”

“Oh, shit, that’s awesome. I didn’t realize—”

“Yeah, I don’t know why, but the whole thing went away.”

“When?” Lup asked. “If you don’t mind telling me.”

Barry told her. As he spoke, her face grew contemplative, a furrow appearing between her eyebrows. When he finished, she said, “Hey, um, this might be super fucking presumptuous of me, but can I run something by you?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Okay, so, there as this one time on the robot world, when you were, like, working with this tiny robot with like a kid inside it?”

“I remember, it kept shocking me.”

“Yeah. And you were just, like, laughing at it. And I—fuck, it’s hard to say this shit out loud. Okay. Yeah. I kind of fell in love with you, I guess? It sounds silly to just say it, but that’s not why you’re better, is it?”

Barry was staring at her. It took too long for him to find words.

Lup looked away. “Of course it’s not. Sorry, I’m being a dumbass, don’t even listen to me.”

“Are you—are you serious?” Barry asked her, finally.

Lup shrugged, a little helplessly. “I am.”

“Then yes.”

Lup’s gaze snapped back to his. “Really?”

“Really. I—I love you, Lup. I’ve loved you for years.”

“Holy fuck,” Lup said. “I love you too.”

She reached for him, and he went to her, and she kissed him, and her wrapped his arms around her.

Sometime later, when they broke apart, Lup said, “Fire lilies, huh? That’s the corniest shit I’ve ever heard.”

Barry laughed, blushing. “I didn’t choose it.”

“I know you didn’t.” She paused, and then said, “This is going to sound selfish, but I’m glad it was me. I’d been thinking, you know, you’d never love me back, because you were dying over someone else. Also I’m sorry I didn’t fucking catch on quicker. Watching you die over and over, and it was because of me...” She trailed off.

“Lup,” he said, “how could it ever be anyone but you?” He brushed a lock of her hair behind her ear. “I’d die a thousand more deaths for you.”

“Well,” Lup said, pressing closer to him, “now you don’t have to.”

———

Later, Barry would remember her saying that as he fell from cliffs and drowned and was blown up by an angry dwarf. He would know that she was still alive, still out there somewhere, because even as he died and died and died, his lungs stayed clear. For now, though, he held her close to him, and just let himself breathe.


End file.
